Before The Mask (2 page)

There was a long silence. “What will you name this child?” the druidess asked.

Daeghrefn stared more deeply, more intently, into the storm. Name the child? He turned the
sword over in his palm. Why should he even keep it, let alone name it?

Triumphant, exhausted, Abelaard took the baby from L'Indasha and presented it to
Daeghrefn. “He's beautiful, don't you think, Father? What will you call him?”

When he heard the boy's voice, Daeghrefn sheathed the sword. Abelaard was here. He could
not kill the baby. But he would find a way to leave it with this sorceressgood payment for
her trouble, he mused. So now was the time for omens, for auguries of his own, for the
naming was Daeghrefn's by the Measure, no matter who was the

child's father. Its mother was, still and all, his wife. And, more importantly, Abelaard's
mother. Daeghrefn set down the sword and steepled his hands, still stiff and red from the
cold.

Yes, now was the time for names. A time to answer his wife in kind for her cruelty and
betrayals. He thought of ice, of loneliness, of forbidding passage....

Winterheart? Hiddukel? He smiled spitefully at the second of the names. God of injustice.
The broken balance.

But, no. There was a certain evil grandeur to the names of the dark gods. He would confer
no grandeur on this child.

As if it had been summoned, a large tomcat, lean and ragged, slinked out of the inclement
darkness, snow spangling its half-frozen fur. Daeghrefn regarded the creature in horrified
fascination. This is the omen, he thought. The name is about to come to me. The cat
carried something large and limp in its moutha dripping entanglement of matted fur and
dirt and torn flesh.

A winter kill. A rat or a mole, perhaps. Something tunneling blindly beneath the snow,
scratched from the hard earth, chittering and scrabbling in its dark nest.

Daeghrefn closed his eyes, warmed by his bloody imaginings. “Verminaard,” he announced
proudly. “The child's name is Verminaard. For he is vermin, dwelling in darkness and filth
like his damned father.”

L'Indasha's eyes widened in amazement. Quietly she mpved to Abelaard's side. A shriek from
Daeghrefn's wife pierced through the hush, through the knight's pronouncements and curses.

“Ah, no!” The druidess turned sharply, a new trouble in her voice.

Daeghrefn sat silently, his eyes closed. From the commotion, from the druidess's whispered
instructions to the lad, the knight imagined the scene unfolding behind him.

The druidess knelt above the woman, her ministrations frantic and swift. But soon,
inevitably, she sighed, her hands slowing, her touch more benediction than healing.
Sorrowfully she pushed the boy and the baby away, gesturing toward a straw mattress in a
candlelit alcove off the main cavern.

Abelaard lingered above his dying mother for a moment, his eyes dull and unreadable. A
well- schooled Solamnic youth, he did as he was told, his emotions veiled behind the stern
tutelage of his masters. And yet he was only a child, and for a moment, he bent low, his
stubby fingers cradling the head of his newborn brother, and reached down to touch his
mother's whitened cheek with the back of his hand. Then, with a soft and nonsensical
whisper, he carried the baby to the alcove and settled onto the straw, wrapping a thin
wool blanket about the both of them. Soon the infant nestled against his brother and slept
deeply and silently.

“She's dead,” L'Indasha announced scarcely an hour later. “ 'Gone to Huma's breast,' as
your Order says. What will you do now?”

Daeghrefn sniffed disgustedly, his eyes fixed on the wintry landscape beyond the cave
entrance. The storm was swelling, the wind rising. The red moon Lunitari peeked from
behind the racing clouds, flooding the snow with a staining crimson light.

The knight turned slowly, the side of his face bathed in the hovering torchlight. For a
moment, he looked like a skeletal wraith, like the Death Knight of the old legends,
through whose hands had slipped the power to turn back the Cataclysm.

“And who are you to question me, idolater?” he mur-

mured, his voice low and menacing, like the humming of distant bees or the high whirring
sound of the rocks over Godshome. “You have no claim on me or on my son.” He gestured
vaguely toward Abelaard, his sword waving grotesquely in the mingling light of the fire
and the spinning moons.

“You have no claim on any of us. Not even that dead harlot's get,” he concluded venomously
and stepped suddenly toward the fire, brushing the snow from his mantle.

L'Indasha inwardly shrank from the knight. Instinct told her to fly, to scatter elusive
magic and escape in the confusion, to burrow into the sheltering dark.... But she squarely
faced the knight and fought back with words calculated to wound.

“This child will eclipse your own darkness,” she proclaimed, holding the baby above the
firelight, holding him out to Daeghrefn. Her voice rang in the ancient inflections of
druidic prophecy and sheer rage. “And his hand will strike your name. But I will not tell
you the rest.”

Daeghrefn laughed harshly. It was ridiculous druidic babble. Then her blazing eye caught
his. Her anger was real.

Daeghrefn held her gaze. Dire things passed briefly through his mind, and for a moment,
the sword turned in his hand, the melted snow beading ominously on the sheath's carved
raven. He would make her retract it. He would bury the blade in ...

No. He would send Robert back here to ... clean out this cave.

“So?” he said, shaking his head slowly, distractedly, his eye passing over the new child's
fair hair and creamy skin. He beckoned for Abelaard. The boy approached him, stopping only
to take the baby from the druidess and hold him cautiously in his shivering, thin arms.

“Druidic nonsense,” the knight whispered. Then louder, his voice cold and assured, he
added, "Put on

your cloak, Abelaard, and leave the child.“ He stared bale-fully at the druidess. ”We must
be off for Nidus while there's aught of the night to travel. It's still a good walk home,
by my reckoning."

The boy put on his garment, but he would not give the baby back to the druidess. “I've
looked forward to a brother for so long, Father. Please. We must take care of him.”

Daeghrefn could refuse Abelaard nothing short of this request. Nothing short, but not
this. “No,” he replied.

The druidess stepped forward and placed her hand on Abelaard's shoulder, an idea forming
as she spoke.

“No, Daeghrefn,” she began, a dry warning in her voice. “You'll keep this child and keep
him well. If you leave himor worseall those in your command will know of your cuckolding.
And who would follow such a man? You cannot be undone before them, can you?”

Daeghrefn's dark eyes locked onto L'Indasha's, and she knew she had won his undying
hatred. And the baby's life.

“Nidus is ten miles from here,” she urged, calmly holding his vacant stare. “You have seen
our weather. You have challenged the storm enough for tonight.”

Daeghrefn broke his gaze and removed his boots. For a moment, L'Indasha's hopes rose,
until she realized he was only drying them by the fire, preparing for the long trek
through the mountains.

“You have heard the stories,” she began quietly, “about these mountains in the winter.”
“I've no time for lore,” Daeghrefn objected.

L'Indasha persisted. She told Daeghrefn about the frozen horses, the dozens of travelers
irrecoverably lost. She told him of the bandits, sealed in ice like insects in a million
years of amber. All the while her touch was light on the shoulder of the boy. Daeghrefn
did not listen, but

Abelaard did. As she knew he would.

And it was enough. When Daeghrefn drew on his boots and walked to the mouth of the cave,
Abelaard remained by the fire. “Father?” he asked, his voice thin and uncertain.

Daeghrefn turned to him warily.

“Can't we just wait out the night here?” Abelaard pleaded. “We left Laca's castle ten days
ago. We're away from the bad place now. Tomorrow we can all go home. The baby, too.
Please, Father.”

As he looked into Abelaard's hollow eyes, something in the knight seemed to turn and
soften. It was sudden and unforeseen, as a line of troops will break in the midst of a
pitched battle. Daeghrefn's shoulders slumped, and slowly he removed his sodden gloves.

“I suppose,” he began, “that a night's stay could not altogether harm us, Abelaard. But
just one night, mind you. We'll be home at Nidus on the morrow, regardless of storm or
cold.”

“One night is all you will need,” the druidess said, for the lad's encouragement more than
Daeghrefn's information. “Storms blow over quickly here, and there will be sun and a clear
path come morning.”

“We're off to Nidus regardless,” the knight insisted, staring into the fire.

L'Indasha buried the dead woman at the far end of a side cavern, deep in the soft clay
floor, while Daeghrefn huddled in blankets around the fire and Abelaard fed the newborn
something the druidess had mixed and warmed for him.

When she finished singing the funeral prayers, they all

slept. Twice in the night L'Indasha stirredonce at the roar of wind across the high
plateau/carrying the cry of a dozen lost travelers beyond her help in the hills of
Est-wilde, and once when the baby awoke and whimpered. It was the baby's cry that brought
her to full waking. It began softly and rose steadily until she heard Abelaard's voice
join with it awkwardly, singing a Solamnic lullaby. The child's voice was small and
fragile amid the roar of wind tumbling through the surrounding hills.

May. your gods keep you, L'Indasha thought, a modest spell shielding her ears against the
plaintive sounds of the children in the center of the cave. If your gods can do anything,
may they keep you in the days to come.

Thc Bridge of Dreed arched narrowly over the canyon, a dark, knobby spine against the
bright autumn sunset. It was the northernmost of three bridges across the gorge. The
southern two were made of vallenwood and were old as the Cataclysm. But this structure was
far older, a narrow stone footpath, one man's width, that had spanned the great chasm for
as long as the histories recalled and the legends remembered. At its very top, a level,
slightly wider area had provided this ceremony a perfect platform.

Barely twelve years old, Verminaard shifted nervously in the saddle. Of course, he had
heard much about this place. Indeed, he had seen the Bridge of Dreed once

before, from a distance, when he and his brother had been goat hunting in the high reaches
above Daeghrefn's castle. It had seemed menacing even thena black, crooked bow spanning
the gorge from east to west. Abelaard had pointed it out to him, then steered him to lower
ground as the younger lad glanced back at the ancient structure, his thoughts filled with
legends of how the world was made.

The finger of Reorx, the forge god. A handle for the mountains he had raised in the Age of
Dreams, as the stories told.

Two years after that hunt, and much closer now, the bridge looked no less grand and
precarious. It arched from one side of the gorge to the other, and, below, there was a
breathtaking drop of three hundred feet to the ragged igneous rocks on the chasm floor.
The stones were littered with brush, dead wood, and old bones.

He would walk that narrow span of rock and exchange places with Laca's son. He would live
in a foreign land and learn to be a knight, for his father said Laca still kept to the
Order.

It was a place for solemn oaths indeed, the boy thought. And he closed his eyes amid the
company, the armed men around him oblivious to his silent prayer.

He prayed that his knighthood would come in another way, that the two quarrelsome
fatherstheir rift as old as the night just before his birth, as wide as the spreading
chasm before himwould knit their discord in the face of the coming war. That Daeghrefn
would go back to the Order. Surely the organized Nerakan army, impelled from somewhere in
the dark heart of the mountains, would persuade Laca of East Borders and Daeghrefn of
Nidus to relent, to trust each other at last. Couldn't they join swords in good faith,
without the approaching dance of deal and transaction? Couldn't they postpone the swapping
of sons until the Nerakans were subdued?

He prayed he would do his father proud in this

exchange. But he knew his prayers tumbled like loose stones into the chasm below him, away
from the starry hand of Paladine, from the eyes of Majere and Kiri-Jolithfar from the
various gods Daeghrefn once revered and worshiped....

Then renounced, when he left the Order.

Daeghrefn stood behind the boy, masking his smile due to the solemnity that would follow.
It was perfect, this gebo-naud, a prime arrangement of fortune and war and politics. As
the years had passed, the Lord of Nidus feared more and more that the secret of his
cuckoldry would be guessed by the other knights. As Verminaard grew, the boy looked the
very picture of Laca.

Who had played nicely into his hands with this treaty and exchange.

He would be rid of Verminaard, Daeghrefn thought with a grim contentment. And Laca would
have his own bastard visited on him. It could not have been better arranged. ,

Verminaard started. You will bid your brother farewell today, the Voice told him. Oh, yes,
farewell, for you will not see him again, though good riddance will it be. And you will be
the elder, the scion, your father's eventual heir.

It always took him by surprise, that sinuous suggesting. The Voice had been with him for
yearsfor as long as he could remember. Melodious and haunting, its tone neither masculine
nor feminine, it would merge with his own thoughts and rise suddenly into hearing, its
suggestions always a mixture of despair and grief and a strange, dark longing. He had
never spoken to his father about it. Daeghrefn would not hold with voices.

What does this mean? Verminaard puzzled, wrestling as always with the Voice's dark
prompting. It is an exchange of noble hostages, not a giving away!

And as always, the Voice was silent when he argued, slipping back into some dark recess,
some alcove of mem-

ory, leaving him alone to bicker and wrestle with its insinuations. I will return!
Verminaard assured himself. But the Voice was gone, leaving him to his rising dread and
misgiving.

He opened his eyes and turned in the saddle. Abelaard, seated importantly amid the armed
escort, winked at him solemnly.

Let it be over soon, the younger boy thought. If the exchange must take place, as the
fathers have sworn on their swords and honors, let it take place quickly.

“You have your instructions?” the stern voice prodded behind them. Abelaard turned to
Daeghrefn, murmuring something hasty and obedient.

Verminaard looked the other waytoward the chasm and the arching bridge and the impossible
distance to the western side.

Daeghrefn moved between them, his dark horse snorting and capering in the brisk evening
air. “No one will attend you, Verminaard,” the knight said. “Laca has not allowed as much.”

Verminaard cast a sideward glance at the Lord of Nidus. Daeghrefn cut an imposing figure
indeed: the chiseled nose, the dark thick brows above piercing eyes. The boy could
understand why the soldiers feared him, why they had followed him out of the Order, become
renegades along with their gloomy commander.

He looked closely at his father's facea frightening, opaque mask of Solamnic instruction.
Daeghrefn would show nothing of himself to Laca this evening. But the boy remembered
Daeghrefn's smile two nights ago, when the last version of the treaty had reached him by
the shaking hands of a Solamnic courier. Then Daeghrefn knew at last that the Lord of East
Borders would accept Nidus's terms in the exchange. But now that triumph was contained
behind a mask of cold composure.

“What is keeping them?” Daeghrefn muttered, shielding

his eyes and looking into the sunset, into the westernmost reaches of sight. “They ought
to be here by now.”

“You don't suppose that the Nerakans” Verminaard began, a dark thought rising in his mind.

“Rest at ease, Brother,” Abelaard whispered. “Laca will be as well armed as we are. The
Nerakans would not dare cross swords or paths with a Solamnic company.”

“'Tis heartening to hear that, Brother,” Verminaard replied brightly, though his spirits
sank at the words. Of course Laca's forces would be armed, and hundreds strong this far
into the mountains. The Nerakans were moving in numbers and with tactics even the oldest
men could not recall and had not expected.

Everywhere along the Khalkist Range, from Sanction to Gargath and still north, to where
the mountains tumbled into the foothills of Estwilde, the Nerakans threatened the borders
of more civilized country. Worse yet, the men of Estwilde and of Sanction had joined with
them. The forces arrayed against the Solamnic Knights and their scattered allies were
large enough and organized enough to pass for an army. Goblins and ogres even joined the
bandit ranks, or so the scouts reported.

So all along the lofty spine of the Khalkists, the border lords were uniting in response,
in mutual defense. Whether they were Solamnics or not, whether they were long-time friends
or had feuded for years, commanders such as Daeghrefn and Laca formed alliances of blood
or honor or urgency. Better to ally with a civilized foe than fall to the relentless,
motley onslaught from the east.

It was why men always went heavily armed in the mountain passes. It was why, twelve years
after the stormy night of Verminaard's birth, the last alliance would be sealed.

A month ago, after the Nerakans assaulted East Borders and pillaged the homesteads within
a mile of Castle Nidus, Daeghrefn and Laca had communicated for the

first time since that ill-omened night, exchanging information, then uncertain tokens,
then veiled assurances . . . arguments....

And now sons.

“There they are!” Abelaard exclaimed, pointing to the dark banners weaving through the
western pass. The waning sunlight glittered red on their armor, and each crimson standard
at the head of the column bore the silver kingfisher of the Order.

Daeghrefn rose in the stirrups, again shielding his eyes against the sunset. “It's Laca on
the gray, I'm certain,” he pronounced. “And the boy with him, on that horse's twin, must
be his son.”

He shot a curious glance at Verminaard, who met his gaze eagerly.

Daeghrefn turned away, speaking softly to Abelaard as the Solamnic column approached them
in the distance. Verminaard strained to hear the conversation, but the words slid
teasingly out of earshot.

Something about intelligence, it was. About couriers and signs.

Then his father sat back in the saddle, his veiled eyes red, as though he had looked too
long into the westering sun.

“Where is the mage?” he asked the sergeant beside him, his voice troubled and hoarse. “We
needn't linger over ceremony and drama.”

Now Verminaard could see them, the two riders at the head of the column, framed by the
kingfisher standards. A tall man, bareheaded amid a helmeted escort, his hair as
white-blond as Verminaard's own. A small, lithe companion, dwarfed by his own horse. The
boy was supposed to be twelve years old, born within minutes of Verminaard himself, in the
warmth of the distant castle.

Abelaard had said they had much in common. “Where is the mage?” Daeghrefn repeated, and
the sergeant wheeled his horse in search of the man in question.

Laca's party arrayed itself along the edge of the chasm, a formidable column of seasoned
cavalry. Their commander leaned forward, awaiting some sign from the eastern edge of the
gorge, and the slight rider beside him dismounted slowly.

Verminaard started at the touch of Abelaard's hand on his shoulder. His brother drew him
close, embraced him. “Be strong,” Abelaard whispered quickly, “and remember that whatever
comes to pass, whatever befalls, I”

“The boy is approaching, Abelaard,” Daeghrefn interrupted. “There is no need to keep him
waiting.”

Abelaard nodded and gave his brother a long, encouraging glance. Verminaard leapt from the
saddle.

Abelaard looked away, his eyes unreadable as he heard Verminaard's footsteps in the gravel
at the bridge's edge. Abelaard had cared for his younger brother ever since his birth. And
for Verminaard, it was as though his father had long ago handed him over to Abelaard, like
a horse or a hunting dog.

I am going now, Verminaard thought. No matter what, I am going. Must gather myself... must
stay under control. Father cannot see me shake ... cannot see me ...

“Where is the damned mage?” Daeghrefn thundered.

From behind him arose the sound of whispers, of urg-ings. Then the mage, Cerestes, brushed
by, the hem of his dusty black robe grazing Daeghrefn's boot. He was young, dark-haired,
handsome in a reptilian sort of way, his eyes golden and heavy-lidded.

“Where is Speratus?” Daeghrefn demanded. He little liked mages, keeping one at the castle
only for defense. But this was not his archmage, only a mere pupil.

Cerestes presented his hasty services after a short explanation: The old mage, Speratus,
had been found at the bottom of the chasm, no doubt besieged when he rode

out alone to prepare the ceremony. His red robe had borne ragged evidence of the furtive,
hooked

daggers of Ner-akan bandits.

One mage was the same as another, Daeghrefn told himself. This young Cerestes seemed
confident, even wiz-ardly. He would do. Anything to be rid of the boy. Solemnly the mage
saluted his new employer and ushered Verminaard onto the spindly bridge.

“May the gods speed you, Verminaard,” Daeghrefn breathed. He looked past the young wizard
to the boy, who looked small and lonely as he neared the crown of the lofty arch. “At last
you return to your father.”

Abelaard looked up at him with a blank face, as unreadable as the soaring cliff, as the
scattered rocks on the floor of the canyon.

The Bridge of Dreed was even more narrow than it appeared from the safety of the bordering
cliffs. At the height of its arch, where the gebo-naudthe Solamnic rite of exchangewould
take place, there was scarcely room for the two lads to stand side by side.

Verminaard moved steadily out toward the middle of the bridge. The Solamnic boy was less
assured. He pulled on his hood and walked, heel cautiously in front of toe, weaving
uncertainly, like an amateur ropewalker. As he approached from the west, the autumn winds
ruffled his sleeves and the gossamer green of his family tabard.

Cerestes, as surefooted and sinuous as one of the huge panteras that were the bane of
mountain herdsmen, followed Verminaard. At the last moment, the mage slipped impossibly
past the lad and glided to the center of the bridge. There, standing between the two boys,
he raised his hand to begin the incantations of the gebo-naud.

Suddenly there was an outcry from the platform. Daeghrefn shifted uneasily, his eyes on
the two boys.

“What's wrong, Father?” Abelaard asked. He asked again, and again, until Daeghrefn's
seneschal, an older

man named Robert, took pity on the lad's persistence.

“It'll be all right,” Robert offered, leaning across his mare's neck toward the attentive
boy.

“Hush, Robert,” Daeghrefn ordered. “The ceremony begins.”

But it did not begin. Cerestes strode westward from the center of the bridge and waved for
one of Laca's retainers to meet him.

When the mage returned to the platform, he instructed the Solamnic boy to wait and brought
Verminaard, bewildered, back to Daeghrefn's party.

“Lord Daeghrefn,” he chimed, “the gebo-naud calls for the exchange of oldest for oldest.
We will have your son Abelaard come forth.”